Abstract
An emerging priority in marine noise pollution research is identifying marine “acoustic refugia” where noise levels are relatively low and good-quality habitat is available to acoustically sensitive species. The endangered Southern Resident population of killer whales (Orcinus orca) that inhabits the transboundary Salish Sea in Canada and the USA are affected by noise pollution. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and spatial multicriteria evaluation (MCE) methods have been used to operationalize suitability analysis in ecology and conservation for site selection problems. However, commonly used methods lack the ability to represent complex logical relationships between input criteria. Therefore, the objective of this study is to apply a more advanced MCE method, known as Logic Scoring of Preference (LSP), to identify acoustic refugia for killer whales in the Salish Sea. This GIS-based LSP-MCE approach considers multiple input criteria by combining input data representing killer whale habitat requirements with noise pollution and other factors to identify suitable acoustic refugia. The results indicate the locations of suitable acoustic refugia and how they are affected by noise pollution from marine vessels in three scenarios developed to represent different levels of vessel traffic. Identifying acoustic refugia can contribute to efforts to reduce the effect of marine noise pollution on killer whale populations by highlighting high-priority areas in which to implement policies such as traffic-limiting measures or marine protected areas. Moreover, the proposed LSP-MCE procedure combines criteria in a stepwise manner that can support environmental management decision-making processes and can be applied to other marine suitability analysis contexts.
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Data Availability
All data used in this study are available from public repositories accessible via the URLs provided in the References section. Data were processed using ESRI ArcGIS software, version 10.4.1.
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Acknowledgements
This study was funded by a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada Discovery Grant awarded to the second author and partially funded through a Simon Fraser University VPR Undergraduate Student Research Award (USRA) Science awarded to the first author. The authors are grateful for the valuable and constructive comments of the anonymous reviewer.
Author Contributions
Both authors contributed to the study conceptualization, design, methodology, formal analysis and writing. Material preparation, GIS data collection and analysis were performed by Logan Drackett. The first draft of the manuscript was written by LD. Both authors read and approved the final manuscript and all the revisions.
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Drackett, L., Dragićević, S. Suitability Analysis of Acoustic Refugia for Endangered Killer Whales (Orcinus orca) Using the GIS-based Logic Scoring of Preference Method. Environmental Management 68, 262–278 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-021-01481-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-021-01481-y